Digging a little deeper

Support for letting tax cuts expire for the wealthy

Boulder resident Brad Armstrong lends his voice to the chorus that supports tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans -- families earning more than $250,000 a year -- to expire.

That is to say, as a millionaire, he thinks he and his fellow wealthy Americans can afford to pay more, instead of having middle- and lower-income taxpayers pay a larger percentage of their own earnings.

"You have to consider who is most able to pay more now," he says. "Just do the math."

Letting the Bush-era rates expire for everyone, including the middle class, is part of the so-called fiscal cliff that Congress and the White House are trying to avoid. While revenues are just one part of a budget fix -- certainly spending must be cut as well -- going off that cliff is predicted to launch another recession. If we're discussing who-can-afford-what here, it's safe to say that no one in America can afford another one of those.

Carol Hedges of the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute crunched the numbers on the percentage of income non-elderly Coloradans pay in taxes, including sales, property and income taxes. The top 1 percent of earners -- those earning more than $557,000 -- paid the smallest percentage. Those who paid the highest percentage were the lowest- and second-lowest 20 percent of earners (families earning less than $20,000 up to $39,000).

While there is widespread disagreement on where spending cuts will come from, the big three have the loudest defenders: Defense, Social Security and Medicare.

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But there's less hue and cry from those who would let taxes go up on about 2 percent of the population. Adherents of the Grover Norquist dogma complain it will hurt small businesses. And they say it so often it's really sunk in. But only 3 to 5 percent of small businesses will see their rates hiked. What's more: 86 percent of small businesses polled by the Small Business Majority said they want to keep the tax cuts for the bottom 98 percent.

Why? Because their businesses require the financial health and spending of that 98 percent.

That hasn't been enough to stop the rhetoric, some of which at least is related to disapproval of Obama's policies in general. News stories and blogs and your uncle's Facebook page are filled with "job creators" who say they will just purposefully make less in order not to pay more.

Really? Someone who makes close enough to $250,000 to manipulate the numbers by working less, or purposefully cutting off customers is not going to give up that extra money. She'll still pay the lower rate on the $250,000. So if she makes $260,000 she'll pay a slightly higher rate on $10,000 and the lower rate on the rest. No one would walk away from keeping the majority of an extra $10,000. Or $50,000 for that matter.

A number of polls -- including by Princeton Survey Research and the presidential exit poll -- show that most Americans think ending the tax cuts for the highest-earners is the right thing to do. So let's get on with it.

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